Page 90 of Evermore

He whispered, his lips against my hair, “You’re all of them and more. You’re their courage and their compassion, their strength and their sacrifice. But you’re also something entirely new, a storm given form, a force of nature that refuses to break. You survived things that would shatter gods. Even now you continue to fight your way out of darkness over and over. Fuck, Paesha, you built a family from broken pieces, and you love them with a fierceness that puts everyone else to shame. That’s your power. It’s not collected pieces of who your soul used to be. It’sthe way you take everything broken and make it whole. Even when you’re broken.”

Lies, the voices screamed.Don’t let him speak.

He forced my face up with his hands buried into my hair. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t see or feel or move beyond the man that commanded everything. “You carry their light within you, but you burn brighter than any of them ever dreamed. You’re the only one who ever made me question everything I am. The only one who made me want to be better. To be worthy.” His words became a mantra, repeated over and over until they drowned out the chaos in my mind. “I know you hate me. I fucking hate me too. But there was never a rule book on how to fall in love knowing you were going to have to say goodbye in the most brutal way.”

Slowly, the voices retreated. The darkness coiled back under my control. He pulled back only enough to swipe a tear from my cheek with his thumb.

“I know you’re fighting demons of my making,” he said softly. “And I know I have no right to ask, no right to hope, but if you let me, I will stand between you and every nightmare that haunts you. Not because you need saving, you’ve never needed that, but because watching you battle alone breaks something in me I didn’t know could still break. I’m not the hero in any story worth telling. My edges are rough, our wounds still bleed into the spaces between us.”

“The voices are piercing,” I whispered and because I couldn’t gather my thoughts beyond the silent screaming in my heart, I said no more. I knew only that I didn’t want him. I didn’t want to be here with him. I didn’t like him. I couldn’t love him. I needed to be away from him. Forever. And there was only one path to that separation. Where he couldn’t find me, and with one brother down, there would only be one to go.

His fingers traced up my arm, over the binding marks Alastor had left and the Remnants that swirled there like an ocean’s tide. “I did this to you. Every mark on your skin, every voice in your head, they’re all because I was too much of a coward to let you go. Too selfish to give you the choice.” He let out a shaky breath, his hand cupping my cheek. I let him, watching his hazel eyes filled with centuries of regret. “I am sorry. A thousand times and more. I’m so sorry.”

Fleetingly, I let myself feel the weight of that apology. The finality of it. His thumb brushed my lower lip and I could feel him trembling, feel the cost of those words in his touch.

I stepped back, breaking contact. “There’s no part of me that can ever trust you again,” I said quietly, each word a blade between us, the Remnants be damned. “That night we were together wasn’t real. None of it was real. You made sure of that. The only thing I ever wanted was to be free. Tell me why you didn’t explain all the details of Alastor’s bargain. How could that have hurt you?”

I watched his face, searching for his next lie. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” I asked, taking another step away from him. “You never thought it would come to pass. You thought I’d be bound to you and unable to be bound to him, didn’t you? You were going to go through with the bargain we made behind your veil of lies. You would have taken all my memories of home? Of her? You were going to make me forget so I would never leave you.” I stumbled backward. “You really are a monster.”

Still, he said nothing. I rushed forward, shoving him. “Say something, you coward. Tell me the truth. Not your pretty bullshit. Tell me what your plan was.”

He grabbed my wrist to force me to be still. “Yes. I would have bound you to me to keep you free of him. I would have donethat. Because it would be better to be bound to someone who cares for you than someone who wants to use you.”

My heart broke a thousand times more with his confession. I knew. Of course I did. But to hear him say it? “I hate you,” I whispered.

“I know you do,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t tell you about the bargain with Alastor without telling you everything.”

I wrapped a steel cage around my heart and forced myself into the role I was meant to play here. His words didn’t matter anymore. But he needed to believe they did.

“Then you should have told me everything.” I broke out of his hold as he shook his head.

“I’ve done that before. Every time you learn the truth, you die before the sun sets.”

The Remnants reared to life in my mind, hissing through the crowd of voices.

Who knew the truth?

Which of us did he tell?

No one came forward. Another lie of his, it seemed.

I wanted to turn away and run, but I couldn’t. Instead I looked up at him, letting vulnerability seep into my expression. Sometimes the best lies were wrapped in truth. “I want to believe you.” My fingers tracing his jaw. “I want to trust that this time will be different.”

His breath caught. I saw hope flickering in those hazel eyes, saw how desperately he wanted this to be real. “I’ll spend every moment proving it to you.”

I pressed closer, letting him feel my surrender. “Then prove it now. Help me find my way through this darkness.”

The smile that broke across his face was devastating in its joy, in its relief. He pulled me against him, his lips brushing my forehead in a touch so gentle it almost made me waver. Almost.

Perfect, Sylvie purred in my mind.He’s always been weak for hope.

I turned away before he could see the truth in my eyes, taking a step toward the twisting paths ahead. Behind me, his voice turned urgent, “Don’t stray from the path.” The pain in those words had nothing to do with the dangers lurking in the darkness. “The things that live here… They must remember what it was to exist, and I’d bet everything they hunger for it.”

Fear, real, primal fear, kept me close to his side as we ventured deeper into the prison he’d created.

Patient, Winter whispered as a door opened into nothing, its hinges creaking in an endless song.Let him lead us deeper.